'The Valleys' by Anthony Stokes

Anthony Stokes has spent five years recording the landscape of his beloved South Wales valleys. With an artist’s eye for colour and composition and the insight of a social commentator he has produced a set of images that encourages the viewer to approach what we consider to be both the familiar and mundane and to open our eyes to their endless possibilities.

His images saturated in colour, reflect what to many has become a forgotten world. A world that will perhaps soon be lost to the developer. Yet we still see in the images within the exhibition the remnants of a landscape that at one time fuelled Wales towards Industrial supremacy.

Both a poignant reflection on ysbryd and yet a celebration of the enduring will of the human spirit to shape what surrounds them and carve out an individual identity in artist’s aesthetic judgements the ordinary has become the extraordinary.

If beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder then Anthony Stokes' works helps us to see that beauty surrounds us even in the most unlikely of locations.

‘The Valleys’ by Anthony Stokes is a photographic touring exhibition initiated by the Cynon Valley Museum & Gallery, with support from The Arts Council of Wales.